The ability to obtain large quantities of thigh meat from slaughtered animals such as poultry or fowl by automated mechanical means is of great importance to world food production. It is not uncommon in the food industry, for instance, that well over a hundred thousand slaughtered birds are processed in one day's shift at a poultry processing plant to obtain meat for public consumption. One common operation in poultry processing plants is the removal of meat from thigh bones of poultry for packaging or further processing.
Various methods and machinery have been developed for the automated removal of thigh meat from thigh bones (femurs) of poultry and fowl as thighs are moved along a processing path. U.S. Pat. No. 8,882,571, for example, discloses a method and apparatus for collecting meat from poultry thighs. The method of the '571 patent involves grasping a thigh bone of an animal thigh at its hip knuckle with a bone holder, cutting the tissue near the hip knuckle, grasping the thigh bone adjacent the hip knuckle between opposing jaws of a meat stripper, and moving the bone holder and meat stripper away from one another to strip the thigh meat from the thigh bone. The '571 patent is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.
While methods and machines such as those disclosed in the incorporated '571 patent have widely been considered successful, one nagging problem has remained. Under some circumstances, the meat stripped from the thigh bone as the stripper and bone holder are moved away from one another gets stuck or lodged in or on the stripper plates of the meat stripper and does not readily fall under the influence of gravity to a collection location below. This, in turn, can cause malfunctions or require additional personnel to monitor the operation and remove the thigh meat manually when it lodges in a meat stripper. While this problem has not been very prevalent in many countries of the world, it has proven to be particularly vexing in poultry processing plants located in the United States. This is because the sizes of chickens processed in the U.S. and thus the sizes of their thighs can be significantly larger and meatier than chickens processed in countries other than the U.S.
Accordingly, there is a need for an improved method and apparatus for deboning animal thighs that addresses the problems and shortcomings discussed above and more specifically that eliminates the lodging of meat in or on the stripper plates of a meat stripper. In a more general sense there is a need to overcome or ameliorate at least one of the disadvantages of the prior art. There is an overall need to provide alternative structures that are less cumbersome in assembly and operation and that moreover can be made relatively inexpensively. Alternatively a need exists at least to provide consumers of poultry processing machinery with a useful choice. It is to the provision of a method and apparatus that meets these and other needs that the present invention is primarily directed.